Freezing Food by: Hannah (21)

Joanna, Ammi, & Nathanael snap peas.

Preparing food in the summer and gathering provisions in the
harvest (Prov. 6:8) is one occupation that the Stover family
predictably pursues every year. With an ever growing family to feed,
our gardens and orchards have expanded to help meet the need as have
our outside contacts for bulk food and produce. The central hub of bulk
food preservation is no place other than the humble kitchen.
Predictable and steady activity rules this control center. One day, we
are freezing, perhaps canning or dehydrating the next, only to squeeze
all three activates inside those four walls a little later. Our kitchen
is kept busy from June to October

Sarah washing beet tops.

with February somehow joining ranks
with the warm weather crowd at maple syrup season.

While many techniques are employed throughout the seasons,
freezing is by far our largest system of putting food by although
canning and root cellaring follow hard on its heals. We freeze
everything from blueberries and peaches to green beans, beets and
turkey. Fruit and meat can be frozen raw while vegetables must first be
blanched in order to keep well once they find the way to their frozen
abode. Fortunately for us, the more mouths that need feeding also results in more hands that need work! Most

Sarah bagging cabbage.

things that we grow
come ripe slowly over a period of time. For example we may work up
green beans twice a week for two and a half months, beets once a month
for five months and cucumbers every other day all growing season long.
Other produce like corn and cabbage are all ripe about the same time. A
few days of concentrated work results in enormous progress. Buying our
sweet corn from a local farmer (we don't have enough space to
grow all of our own) allows us to put in several heavy days of work
resulting in a year's supply of frozen corn.
Everyone's combined effort on this one activity results in
huge progress coupled with lots of fun and all the corn you can eat,
within reason!

Julia and Caleb snapping green beans.

Caleb (age 7)

Sometimes I help pick green beans, well, hardly ever. I have
to snap lots of green beans, that's not to say I like it, but
it has to be done. I snap great big monsterous bowls full of beans
every year.

Julia (age 14)

Julia prepaing beets.

One day towards the end of the year we worked up beets. After
pulling them from the garden and scrubbing them up at the outdoor
faucet, we baked them. Beets cook slowly. We let them cool for a very
long time before working them up so they won't burn our fingers. To
skin the beets we (littler children) grabbed them with our hands and
slipped the skins off. The next person would cut them into bite size
chunks for freezing. The beet juice stained our hands bright red. Once
when Dad walked through he said 'I have caught you red handed.' There
was nothing we could say. I have thought of that every time we have
worked up beets since!

Joanna making Pesto.

Ammi (age 9)

I made basil pesto this year. We had lots of basil plants in
our garden to be picked. I liked it best when there was only one big
bowl full of leaves for me to make into pesto each day. I used our
blender to puree the basil, oil, garlic and nuts together. When that
was done, I mixed in parmesan cheese and then I had to taste it to see
if I had put in enough cheese. If so I measured it into containers and
labeled them so that we would know they were pesto. Then I would carry
it down to the freezer and put it in so that we could enjoy it during
the winter.

Joanna harvesting spinach.

Joanna (age 11)

Spinach is a very hardy plant, it is up before almost anything
else and when planted again in the fall, is stays till after everything
else is done. Like most vegetables it has its good years and it has bad
years, (This was a bad year.) I don't like washing spinach
after a rain storm because the rain spatters dirt all over the leaves
and it takes longer to wash.

The main thing we do with spinach is to eat it in salads and
to freeze it, but we also use it in meatballs. I like spinach.

Craig cuts corn from the cob.

Caleb (age 7)

Early in the morning (before I wake up) Nathanael and
Zechariah go with Dad to pick corn at the farmer's field. We
shuck it and bring the big bowls full of ears into the house. Our great
big maple syrup pots work good for boiling the corn. After the corn has
cooled off in the sinks of cold water we pile them on the counter and
everyone works them up. I help by cutting the corn (along with my
brothers and sisters help) off of the cobs. While sometimes we either
listen to a tape or someone reads a book to us. One person boils the
corn, one person bags it, one person reads the book and everyone else
cuts it. Sometimes I help by carrying the corn cobs out and dumping
them on the compost heap. It is heavy work but I kind of like it.